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THE ALABAMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
^^ONXGOrvIERY 

Reprint No. 14 



What will be the 
Final Estimate of Yancey? 



BY 



GEORGE PETRIE, Ph. D. 



[From the TRANSACTIONS 1899-1903, Vol. IV] 



MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 
1904 



^■. 



VII. WHAT WILL BE THE FINAL ESTIMATE OF 

YANCEY? 

By Gkorge; Pktrie/ Pii. D., Auburn. 

The time is rapidly comintj;' when men can ihink and speak of 
our Civil War without passion and without prejudice. Indeed 
considerable progress has already been made in this direction. 
Southern writers have shown a ready appreciation of the many 
admirable qualities of Lincoln, who was once known to us chietly 
as the leader of what we termed the "Black Republican Party." 
On the other hand Calhoun, the most influential of Southern 
statesmen, a man whose views have long been an incomprehensible 
riddle to our Northern friends, has received no fairer treatment 
or more graceful recognition than in the recent life of Webster 
written by Mr. Lodge, a senator from Massachusetts. These 
two cases are typical of a growing tendency toward fairness and 
even generosity on both sides in dealing with men and events 
connected with that period. 

Now is it not strange that in the dawn of this "era of good feel- 
ing," we should hear so little about a man who played so con- 
spicuous a role as Yancey? His name was never mentioned for 

^ Dr. George Petrie, professor of History and Latin, Alabama Poly- 
technic Institute, Auburn, since i8gi, was born at Montgomery, Ala., April 
lo, 1866, and is the son of Rev. Dr. George Laurens and Mary (Cooper) 
Petrie, and grandson of Rev. Dr. G. H. W. and Mary J. (Prince) Petrie. 
His father was a distinguished teacher and Presbyterian preacher, 
and was chaplain of the 22nd Alabama regiment. C. S. A. Dr. Petrie 
graduated at the University of Virginia in 1887 with the A. AL degree, 
and in that year became adjunct professor of modem languages and 
history in the Agricultural and Mechanical College (A. P. L), Auburn, 
where he remained until 1889. In that year he entered Johns Hopkins 
University, where he completed his course for the Ph. D. degree in i8gi. 
Since that date he has been at the A. P. I. as above noted. Dr. Petrie 
is the author of Church and State in Early Maryland (J. H. Univ. Studies, 
loth series. No. 4, 1892) ; "Can the Teaching of American History be 
made Interesting?" in the Sewance Rcvieiv, May, 1896; "Montgomery 
Alabama," in Historic Tozims of the Southern States (1900). besides a 
number of articles in magazines and other journals. Dr. Petrie is a 
most enthusiastic student and teacher of history. Several of the best 
papers in this volume were prepared under his direction, notably those 
by Walter L. Fleming, Miss Toccoa Cozart, Shepherd H. Roberts, Gaius 
Whitfield, Jr., Miss Emma B. Culver, and J. E. D. Yonge.— Ehitor. 

(307) 



3oS Alabama Historical Society. 

the Hall of Fame. Xo speech of his is to be found in any col- 
lection of American oratory. No statue has been raised to his 
memory. - 

Is there any significance in this omission? Is it an oversight 
due to a general lack of information and a consequent failure to 
appreciate his importance? Or is this omission partly intentional? 
Is it due to a feeling on the part of some that Yancey was thv^ 
embodiment of an unwise and disastrous policy, that he was the 
apostle of disunion and advocated the reopening of the African 
slave trade, and that even his eloquence depended on sectional 
passions and animosity? If thoughts of this kind be at all com- 
mon, will not Yancey's fame grow less and less as our national 
feeling of union grows stronger and stronger ; and will he not in 
time pass into that oblivion which awaits all who are merely un- 
successful agitators? 

The first question, therefore, which confronts the student who 
tries to determine the final estimate of Yancey is whether posterity 
will know him at all. Now I believe that his name will not be 
forgotten and that his reputation will last ; and the reasons that 
I assign for this view do not depend on any personal opinion as 
to the wisdom or the unwisdom of the course he pursued, or of the 
policy he advocated. 

Whatever one may think of these matters of policy, he must, 
if he has studied ante-bellum history, admit Yancey's ability and 
influence. For weal or for woe he played an important part. 
His name is inseparably linked with the series of events that 
terminated in the Confederacy; and the more fully their histoiy 
is written, the more attention will have to be paid to him. 

His association with the movement was in many ways an inti- 
mate one. He was the last great popular expounder of the doc- 
trine of State rights, upon which more and more Southerners of 
all schools came to base their theories of political rights, however 
much tliey might differ as to their practical policies. 

But, after all, few persons understand or care about constitu- 
tional theories and logical arguments. Even so great a jurist as 
Marshall is scarcely known outside the circle of lawyers. And I 



' Since this was written a full life size oil painting of Yancey has been 
executed and placed in the porlrail Rallcry of the Alabama Department of 
Archives and History at the State capitol. 



Final Estimate of Yancey. — Pctric. 309 

am inclined to think that tills is scarcely the i)hasc of Yancey's 
connection with the Southern movement which will appeal most 
to the imagination of posterity. To them he will be chiefly known 
as its impassioned leader, who by his boldness, his earnestness and 
his eloquence did more perhaps than any one else to make these 
State rights doctrines a powerful force in practical politics. 

But this suggests another reason why his name will not be 
forgotten ; and it is, too, independent of our personal views of 
the wisdom of his policy. I refer to the permanent value of his 
speeches. Without discussing just yet their excellence as speci- 
mens of the art of oratory, I think the point can be clearly made 
that they have qualities which must give them a permanent value. 
They combine, like Yancey himself, logic and emotion in an un- 
usual degree. While they present in a brief and pointed form the 
dominant political creed of the South, they do it not in the cool, 
detached manner of Calhoun, but with an earnestness and a tire 
that make us feel the passion of the times with a reality 
that is really w^onderful. Now this double quality is just what 
will always make them invaluable to the student, who in the quiet 
of his study finds a keen fascination in analyzing the problems 
connected with slavery and State sovereignty, and yet cannot quite 
understand why either side should fight about them. 

If then Yancey's name will live and men will continue to read 
and think about him, we may fairly ask : What will their opinion 
be? We cannot tell what it wall be in all of its details. On 
minor matters they probably will disagree, as men now do about 
Jefferson and even Cromwell or Julius Caesar. But there are 
some things, and they are important, about which we can safely 
venture a prediction. 

First of all, the final estimate will correct some errors which 
have arisen from an exaggeration or a distortion of his real 
views. For example, he has been considered a champion of the 
African slave trade and has suffered accordingly. This was an 
unfair inference from some words spoken with perhaps impolitic 
frankness at Montgomery in 1858. What he really said was that 
the congressional prohibition ought to be removed, first, because 
it went too far in terming the slave trade piracy and. second, be- 
cause, according to the State rights theory the whole question 



/ 



3IO Alabama Historical Society. 

properly should be left to the several States.-' As to whether its 
actual revival would be desirable he clearly admitted that he had as 
yet reached no definite conclusion. Perhaps he meant to hold in 
reserve the possibility of such a revival as a political weapon to 
be used against abolitionists anil free soilers if in his opinion their 
aggressions woukl require it. 

After secession Yancey was one of the first to urge the South- 
ern States to proliibit this same African slave trade. On Jan.. 
jS, 1861, he said in the Alabama convention: "But, sir, if such 
considerations induced a doubt under the old regime, they dispel 
all doubt under the new. * * * With no territories to people 
and no balance of power to strive for and to sustain, we shall 
need no other supply of labor than the ordinary laws of natural 
increase and emigration of owners with slaves will give us in 
abundance. * * * \t ti^^ proper time I shall move an amend- 
ment proposing that the Southern Confederacy shall prohibit the 
trade in slaves from any foreign quarters."* 

There is another important matter in regard to wdiich I think 
posterity will say that Yancey has sometimes been misunderstood. 
He has been called a disunionist and the term has been used in 
such a way as to imply that he regarded separation from the 
Union not merely as a last remedy for wrongs that could not be 
righted otherwise, but as a thing desirable in itself and preferable 
to a redress of grievances within the Union. This opinion prob- 
ably had its origin in the earnestness and vigor with which he 
repeatedly advocated secession ; but it overlooks the important 
fact that he did so only because he believed it no longer possible 
to get what he always preferred, constitutional rights, in the 
Union. The final estimate will, I think, recognize that Yancey 
and Webster were equally devoted to the Union under the con- 
stitution. But with Yancey the Union was desirable chiefly as 
giving the States the benefit of the constitution, while with Web- 
ster the constitution was valuable chiefly as perpetuating the 
Union. Yancey thought the time had come when either the 
Union or the constitution had to be given up, and he preferred to 
give up the Union. 

Two days after Lincoln's election he said: "In my opinion the 

* DuBosc's Life of Yancey, p. 358. ct. seq. The whole matter was much 
disciisscd in the MDiURomcry and Richmoird papers of 1858. 
' \r.,ui^'n„,.-<y Weekly Advertiser, Feb. 6, 1861. 



Final Estimate of Yancey. — Pctric. 311 

election of Abraham Lincoln to the office of president of the 
United States by the Black Republican Party, taken in c(jimection 
with his own political utterances, and the views and acts of his 
party in congress, and the Northern States, is an overt act against 
the constitution and against the Union, and as such should be 
sufficient cause for a withdrawal of the State of Alabama, and a 
resumption of all the powers she has granted to the L'nion, by 
separate State secession. And while giving utterance to thi.s ad- 
vice, I repudiate as utterly untrue that in any just sense I am a 
disunionist. If always to have advocated the right of all under 
the constitution — if never to have assailed any single provision 
of that constitution — if the advocacy of a policy of defense 
against wrong done to Southern rights, equality and honor in 
the Union, constitutes a friend to that "more perfect Union" rep- 
resented by the constitution, then by universal acclaim I should 
be held to be a Union man ; and if to-night I advise my State to 
withdraw herself from this Federal government in order to pro- 
tect her rights and the rights of her people from wrongs done to 
them by violation of that constitution by numerical power that 
controls the government, I have the judgment of the constitution 
itself in my favor and against its violators, and am no dis- 
unionist."'* 

But in every estimate of Yancey the chief difficulty arises when 
one comes to pass judgment on his policy. Here is where opin- 
ions differ most widely and have done so from his own day down 
to ours. Some have pronounced his course the only one which 
the South could pursue without sacrificing its rights and its man- 
hood, others have considered it rash, impracticable, and disas- 
trous. Under such circumstances it is manifestly difficult to fore- 
cast with any certainty the verdict of history. Yet I think most 
of us will agree that certain facts will be recognized by that ver- 
dict and will be included in the final estimate. 

First, then, I think there will be little dispute as to what was 
his policy. Its key note was struck in the once famous "Alabama 
Platform" which consisted of two parts, one stating a theory, the 
other a policy. The first said : "Neither congress nor the terri- 
torial government which it establishes has a right in any wMy to 
prohibit slavery in a territory," the second added : "No candidate 



'- Hodgson's Cradle of the Confederacy. 



312 Alabama Historical Society. 

for the presidency can get our votes unless he endorses this view." 
The first half was the old doctrine of Calhoun and had come with 
his mantle to Alabama, the other half was Yancey's addition and 
the motto of his life. The two ideas were characteristic of their 
authors ; Calhoun's part was a keen and unanswerable deduction 
from the State rights view of our government, Yancey's a bold 
and unswerving stand for his rights under the constitution. 
Combined they epitomize Yancey's position — a position maintain- 
ed with striking consistency from 184S when the war with Mexico 
made the territorial question the burning issue down to i860 
when he strenuously opposed the nomination of Douglas. 

In the ne.xt place, I think that when the future historian comes 
to inquire whether it was wiser for the South to insist, as Yancey 
urged, on all its rights under the constitution, or to accept some 
such compromise as Douglas suggested, he will have to admit 
that neither plan was fully tried. Yancey hoped that a united 
South could compel the practical politicians to accept its creed 
and thereby obtain a national administration pledged to maintain 
its rights. Whether this would have been possible will probably 
remain a mooted question as the South failed to unite on his po- 
litical policy. Douglas maintained that his policy would secure 
practically all that the South required and that its success was 
possible if the South would unite with Northern Democrats on it. 
Whether either of his claims were justifiable will equally remain 
a subject for speculation as the South likewise failed to unite on 
his policy. Whether either policy if endorsed by a united South 
could have defeated the Republican party will perhaps always 
remain a fascinating problem for historians, as also the question 
whether Yancey's policy, even if it had led to defeat although 
endorsed by a united South, would have been preferable to polit- 
ical success upon Douglas's principles. 



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